Often times the hard work done at the foundation level is ignored and underappreciated, while the surface/presentation work is easily spotted and praised by the bystanders. Yet without the foundation work, the surface work would have never been there at the first place.

You praise a house with nice interior design and furniture. You don’t praise a house with stable electricity and water access – that’s a given; yet when the water leaks, guess who gets the complains?

With similar logic, the first engineer who make the code work gets all the credits, even in the sluggish and ugly way. Whereas the next one that tears it apart, refactors to makes it better, more scalable doesn’t get quite as much credit. Yet it’s debatable which course of work is more difficult.

And in lots of case, scaling something up is miles more difficult than just making it work.

Any living specie , by instinct, searches for the difference, becoz it is the foundation for diversity and hence evolution. A new work probably gets more notice because of its novelty, than a continuous improvement. Unless the improvement changes the initial work significantly, maybe it changes that way we interact with the product, or change the function of the product fundamentally. Apple didn’t make the first touch screen device, but they completed it by providing platforms (iTunes to buy music, Apple App to install new software) and so changed the way we use phones completely. It was just an added improvement, making Apple phones more scalable. But still has an impact and we notice.
A house wont get appreciated with stable electricity and water access, but if you can innovate it – like using voice to turn on the light, or use phone to track water usage. Then it’s another story.

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About Huy

I'm 22 year young, joining the long journey to fight insecurity and seek clarity.